


Town of Jade

by cosmicsoup805



Category: Finding Paradise (Video Game), To The Moon (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, How Do I Tag, Self-Doubt, Self-Indulgent, i made colin so angsty, im sorry, pretty much a character study, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 10:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17222072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicsoup805/pseuds/cosmicsoup805
Summary: Like everything about her, it pushed him forward when he wanted to run away the most. He took a deep breath and looked up at the girl across the balcony.The scariest thing about growing up is learning that you'll sometimes be alone. Because while some things are meant to stay, some are only meant to carry you so far.





	Town of Jade

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic in a looong time and, more importantly, my first one on this website so there might be formatting mistakes here and there. I managed to finish this one basically a year after I wrote a small snippet inspired by this song cover by rachie. 
> 
> Song used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe1oOgv3QKI

* * *

 

**_// Ah, there is nothing I could do that would be fun at all today. I feel like I’m just rotting away. If that’s the case, then how about tomorrow we go on a date? //_ **

Honestly, this was torture.

Colin’s entire upper body felt stiff as he trudged through the woods. Just when he was starting to get used to carrying his cello between home and school, he was greeted by a sudden shower of rain. Now here he was, desperately trying to keep his umbrella up while his shoulders screamed for a break.

A couple of steps in front of him, Faye turned around with a pout.  Her uniform was drenched; yet, she was still trying to hide from the rain with her umbrella. Colin couldn’t tell if she was faking her frown but rolled with her usual antics as she called out to him.

“C’mon slowpoke!”

“I’d like to see you walk with ten pounds on your back.”

Faye scoffed. “I can’t believe you’d force a girl like me to do your dirty work, Colin. It’s unbelievable.”

Colin shook his head. They were almost at his building and the mountain of things he had to prepare for loomed over him. In a few weeks, he’ll be expected to perform with the band despite only knowing how to play a barely passable scale. Above all, there wasn’t anything interesting happening after school, despite it being a Friday. Honestly, Colin just wanted to lie down today. And tomorrow. And the next day. And-

“Oh quit sulking,” Faye said. She slowed down to try and walk beside him. Her steps were awkward as it tried to match his steps. “It’s already bad enough that I’m soaking wet.”

“Sorry,” Colin mumbled. “I guess I’m stressed about the performance.”

 _But that’s like a month from now. God, you’re so serious about everything._ Colin waited for this response, but after a moment Faye said, “Hmm…why don’t we head over to the cliff tomorrow? We can go practice.”

“Seriously? You want to practice?”

“Why not?” she said, “It’s so boring back home and…” She smirked. “If I’m forced to listen to your recital, I would appreciate if it wasn’t as bad as our last practice sounded.”

Unfortunately for her, the two of them happened to pass by a huge puddle as she said that. Colin kicked some of it towards his friend. Despite soaking wet already, she jumped back with a yelp before scowling at him. Feeling her murderous intent, Colin cursed at himself as he began running back to his apartment. His shoulders, weak as they were, fell to his sides and Colin felt his hair growing damp.

“Good for you! You jerk!” Faye called at behind him before a light chuckle escaped her lips. The sound briefly cleared his mind as Colin felt himself running faster. When they reached the front of the building, Faye flicked the back of the boy’s head. Panting, she said, “Got you.”

Despite the scolding he got from the front desk, Colin marched towards his apartment with bright eyes.

He can do this.

* * *

 

**_// Spring is coming soon you know. We’ll meet at the bus stop and we’ll go to the Town of Jade, past the city somewhere far away. //_ **

“So why won’t you go to that airport and ask for lessons?”

“Because you don’t just _go_ to an airport and _ask_ for lessons!” Colin exclaimed, his hands waving around as he tried to get his point across.

Faye stared at him. He hated how stubborn she can get.

“Why?”

A silence settled between them. Colin slid his fingers across the smooth sides of the paper airplane, feeling the dull edges of the plane scratching the pads of his fingers. Faye stared. She always stared. Whether he was looking at her or not, he always felt that lingering feeling of disappointment emanating from that stare. It wasn’t the crestfallen kind of disappointment that would rile up guilt or defense within him. On the contrary, it was the kind that never failed to pull him away from his doubts. Like everything about her, it pushed him forward when he wanted to run away the most. He took a deep breath and looked up at the girl across the balcony.

“Hey,” he warned before lifting the paper airplane and throwing it.

Colin expected the girl to laugh at him or at least quirk her mouth a little after what happened the first time he tried throwing a plane to her. Instead, she showed no emotion as she observed the plane moving towards her. The only telling sign of her doubt was the way she pursed her lips as she reached out to catch it. Despite her attempts to hide her surprise, he saw a faint smile reach her mouth.

“It made it.”

Colin grinned. “Tomorrow, we’ll go to the airport and see if they have any classes.”

Spinning the plane between her hands, Faye replied, “They will.” She smirked. “Or we’ll make them.”

* * *

 

**_// So I fell asleep and when I opened my eyes… //_ **

When Colin was younger, his entire world felt like a dream. Reality and fiction interweaved in such a way that he’ll never be able to unravel the two apart if he tried. Time was never linear. Memories would jump, flow together, merge into a new memory, or be a blurry mess that Colin had to work to clear up. It wasn’t surprising that these memories made the most sense when he went to sleep.

> **ERROR: CANNOT REACH MEMORY**

**_// …we were floating in the sky! //_ **

Colin drank the view below as he leaned over the edge of his paper plane. The fog made the lights below twinkle and it felt like he was between two different universes. Besides him, a small brown bird stared off into the distance. The sight of his fateful friend made him grin.

“We’ll get there,” he assured her. His head felt light as the streetlights below began to swallow the two up.

“We’ll make it.”

But the fog didn’t go away. A forest replaced the sleepy city the two friends left behind, yet they were no closer to reaching their goal, wherever it was. Colin was scanning the skies now. Beside him, the bird continued to stare off into the distance. The anger, the euphoria, whatever he initially felt at the beginning of this journey was gone.

“I’m sorry. I can-”

**_// To heaven I fall, but straight through the ground, my heart drunk on its own sound. With my skirt all around me as my world turns upside down.//_ **

 

> **ERROR: CANNOT REACH-** He recalls crying out to the bird as she lifted her wings. But as he reached out to get her, he found her already falling toward the ground below. He felt the plane tear underneath him and, soon enough, he began falling too.
> 
> **ERROR –** He feels the air escape his lungs as he begins to scream. He’s clawing to reach her. He’s not going to let her die. He’s not going to leave her. He can’t. He spots her skirt flap from the speed of the winds. He can’t lose her. Not again…
> 
> **ERROR: CANNOT REACH MEMORY**

ERROR: CANNOT REACH MEMORY

* * *

Colin couldn’t tell whether the knots in his stomach were from nervousness or dread. Faye was stretched out on the seats besides him, eyes closed but not quite asleep as the bus wasn’t filled with her snores yet. Colin felt the bus rattle with each rock driven over as his body pressed on the window. However, his eyes glazed over the cloudy skies above them, replaying last night’s… memory? It all felt too out there, even by his standards. That’s what he told himself when he woke up. He had occasional dreams about the bird he kept but the image a skirt flapping in wind freaked him out.

He brushed it off as him getting too sentimental after Faye’s deal to come with him to the airport. Although most of his dreams tend to carry a bit of static to them, this one felt like it was reaching a frequency barely reachable to him. At the end of it, Colin could only grasp one solid detail. He glanced across the bus again, the knots in his stomach extended to his chest. After the dream, it was difficult to separate this feeling when he saw her.

**_// It won’t ever stop this impulse I got. //_ **

Through the muddle of his brain, sparks flew to places it tended to soar over. It’s nothing discerning at first. He watched himself see his parents off to work and running to the television immediately afterwards. He watched himself walking out of school to meet with Faye. Then, the lenses shift. He watches himself laugh and joke with Rudog but the walls feel farther than it was before. The sounds of the laughter and the TV muffle as the deafening sound of silence wraps around him. He feels wind pass by as he looks at himself walk past another version of himself sitting alone on the teeter-totter. Instinctively, his eyes glaze as he feels the passing stares and listens to the snickers from the kids around him. This would be the part where his mind would wander off, but where else could he go when his mind brought this to him in the first place? The two worlds collided, stretched, and squeezed into him as a sinking feeling crawled onto him.

He felt his body squish between the wall and something…softer. “Hey.” He looked over to Faye. “You feeling alright?”  
  
**_But whenever I’m with you… //_**

Colin nodded. He looked past her to glance at the sky, clearer than it was a couple minutes ago. Bringing his attention back to Faye, he tried to let go of some of the tension in him.

“Yeah,” he said, “I’m okay.”

**_// Wonder if there’s a love out there that could //_ **

* * *

 

**_// I’ll twirl it around, my umbrella-li-la-la //_ **

“So what are you gonna do now?”

Colin wrapped his fingers around the pen he was just twirling. He tried his best not to think much about the future throughout senior year. But with the memory of the light diploma on his hand and watching some of his classmates walking down the street to celebrate together…he wondered what’s out there for him.

“Oh, you know…” He spun his pen over his thumb again. “Keep working at the airport. I’ve heard the boss has connections with some of the bigger airports so maybe I’ll be able to move up to a commercial plane one day.”

Faye twirled her hair again. “Colin, don’t you think it’s time for you to –“

“No, I don’t,” he said, catching the pen. “The fact that I graduated has nothing to do with you, with _this_.” He tried to hold back his frustration but he was tired of Faye’s hints. “It doesn’t matter because as long as you’re with me…”

**_// I don’t wanna be…an adult alright! There’s nothing to look forward to in life. //_ **

 “I’ll be fine. As long as you’re here, I’ll be alright.”

As Faye gave him a sad smile, he heard a voice.

> **FAYE:** Colin…

* * *

The scenery morphed around them, starting at two balconies eerily similar to the ones from their childhood, the hill they would always practice on, and finally an area surrounded by clouds. Throughout all of that, Faye wore the same dejected expression she had before the strange voice came. When they reached the last area, she turned around. “I’m sorry for bringing you here so early.”

**_// The two of us here, though it wasn’t clear. I think now I understand. We were given a chance to do it all over again //_ **

 “Faye? Where are we?” Colin looked around the room and saw a wooden door under a white arch. He slowly walked up to it and saw five versions of himself at different stages of his life. Surrounding these versions were familiar objects. Though, that information came in retrospect. What really caught his attention was the black hole that surrounded the one that looked the most like him.  Dozens of questions filled his mind, but before he was able to process them, he felt someone’s hand on his shoulder. Faye gently pulled him back and closed the door. After she closed the door, she turned around and studied him.

Realizing his throat was dry, Colin gulped. “W-What was that? Was that me?”

Faye looked away. “I’m sorry for bringing you here. I slipped up while going through your memories.”

“I don’t understand. That was me, right? How…”

“Do you remember that neurological study about rewriting memories?”

“By Sigmund Corp? Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, they managed to develop their findings into a business. Now, they rewrite the memories of…people who wish to live a different life.”

“And I’m one of those people?”

Faye nodded.

“That sounds like a sci-fi movie! You know how crazy this sounds?”

“Colin, _please_. We don’t have enough time,” Faye said. She knew she could just reset his memory again, but she couldn’t do that to him. This wasn’t where she wanted to say their final goodbyes, but she won’t mess with his memories any more than _they_ already did.

Time. Colin remembered the rest of Sigmund Corp’s study. Rewriting memories is possible but it would have dangerous effects due to discrepancies in the patient’s memories. That’s why the company concluded that….

Oh.

“I’m…” _dying_.

Faye didn’t answer him. Instead, she pulled up a hologram and pressed something on the screen. He saw his life flash before his eyes. He heard the most beautiful piano play. He saw the world thousands of miles below him as he piloted a plane. He saw a child that looked like him on his shoulders.

_I’m dying._

“Do you have any regrets?” Faye asked.

**_// So bright and define, so gentle and kind, our ordinary lives… //_ **

He recalled the dozens of birds around the bird feeder he put up. None of their wings had a scar. The sound of children laughing played in his ear as he saw a brown dress pass by him. “Where did you go?”

“I had to leave eventually Colin.”

“But…”

“But I didn’t really leave. You know that right? I was always there. I was always watching you. And if you didn’t like a second of what you just saw, I’m going to knock some sense into you.” She playfully shoved her friend. In the distance, they heard a duet between a cello and a piano play. Faye watched Colin smile as he tried to listen to the song.

“…Do you have any regrets?”

She suddenly felt arms wrapping around her. She felt Colin’s hands clutching the back of her dress as she returned his hug. “I’m sorry I was so stubborn that day,” he said, “But in the end, I’m glad you stayed in my life for that long. You’re the reason why I learned to fly Faye. You’re the reason I kept going.”

“I’m glad I got to tell you this.”

Finally, Colin Reeds was satisfied. And with that, Faye signaled the machine.

**_// …overflow, watch it grow with happiness //_ **

**Author's Note:**

> //To heaven, I fall, but straight through the ground  
> My heart drunk on its own sound  
> With my skirt all around me as my world turns upside down  
> But you were the light, igniting my life; you were always by my side.  
> “Thank you for always sticking by me here”  
> Your hands slip through mine as they disappeared.//
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please comment and constructive criticism is always welcome (especially how I spaced the lyrics and if it was distracting in any way).


End file.
